MSM Does Journalism

 9/15/26 Newsweek:

Images claiming to show President Donald Trump kissing his executive assistant, Natalie Harp, on a golf course have circulated widely on social media, prompting questions about whether they are genuine....

No established news organization, official White House photographer or photo agency has been identified as the source of either image. Searches of White House material and photographs published by AP, Reuters and Getty Images did not locate a corresponding image from the purported encounter.

The two circulating pictures appear to be versions of the same scene rather than independent photographs corroborating one another. One is clearer, while the other is blurred and contains fewer details that can be examined.

The higher-resolution version contains several visual irregularities associated with AI-generated imagery. Harp’s visible hand appears to have six fingers, while parts of the golf equipment and background lack consistent shapes and detail. The lower-resolution image is too degraded for some of those anomalies to be seen clearly, but blurring an image does not establish that the underlying scene is authentic.

Newsweek also submitted both versions to Grok, the AI assistant developed by xAI. Its assessment was consistent with the anomalies outlined above. Grok said no single irregularity proved fabrication but concluded that the combined evidence was characteristic of an AI-generated image that had subsequently been blurred or compressed.

Newsweek further asked ChatGPT to assess the files. It said the irregularities described above were consistent with AI generation or substantial digital manipulation and found no useful camera, date, location or editing metadata embedded in either image. ChatGPT cautioned that metadata is often removed during online sharing and therefore cannot settle the question alone, but assessed fabrication as the more likely explanation.

OpenAI’s verification tool found no SynthID watermark or trusted C2PA record linking the image to OpenAI products, but cautioned that this did not rule out its creation with another AI system....

The images do not authentically show Trump kissing Harp on a golf course. No verified source for the purported photographs has been identified, and the clearer version contains visual anomalies associated with AI generation, including what appears to be a sixth finger on Harp’s hand. The two pictures are versions of the same unverified scene, not separate images confirming that the encounter occurred.